Thursday, March 5, 2015

RIP Harve Bennett

Harve Bennett, the producer who helped guide four of
Paramount’s Star Trek movies in the 1980s and produced TV series Mod Squad, The
Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, died Wednesday in Oregon. He was
84 and becomes the latest key figure lost from the seminal Star Trek franchise
following Leonard Nimoy’s death February 27.

After executive stints at ABC and CBS and co-creating Mod
Squad, Bennett had a hand in creating or producing some of the most iconic
sci-fi series on TV including serving as exec producer on both The Six Million
Dollar Man (he voiced the opening credits, according to Bennett in a 2008
Archive of American Television interview) and The Bionic Woman.

Bennett then moved to Columbia Pictures Television as a
TV producer where his shows includedSalvage 1, the miniseries The Jesse Owens Story and A Woman Called
Golda, which was Ingrid Bergman’s final role and which co-starred Nimoy. Such
creds led Bennett to the Star Trek movie franchise, eventually teaming with
director Nicholas Meyer on the second movie in the series, Star Trek: The Wrath
Of Khan — which featured the death of Nimoy’s character Spock — after cramming
for the writing gig by watching every episode of the TV series. The pic’s
success sealed the franchise’s place and led to Bennett producing Star Treks
III, IV and V.

“He was a remarkable man and he was unpretentious and
self-effacing. I don’t think there would be a Star Trek franchise without him.
He rescued it.He’s endangered of being
lost in the shuffle, but he’s the guy who figured it out,” said Meyer, who
worked with Bennett on Wrath Of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

“He watched all 79 of those original episodes and he was
the one who plucked out Khan,” added Meyer.The fact that actor Ricardo Montalban, who originated the role of Khan,
was in the spotlight at the time with ABC’s Fantasy Island also further fueled
the return of the character to the Star Trek canon.

1986’s The Voyage Home became the first Star Trek film to
surpass the century mark at the domestic box office with $109.7M. The film
centered around the Star Trek crew time-traveling to 20th century America to
retrieve humpback whales which could communicate with an alien probe. The film
resonated with its environmentalism themes. Bennett and Nimoy, who served as
director and co-screenwriter on the film, hatched the story. Meyer and Peter
Krikes also worked on the script.

The Chicago-born Bennett appeared frequently as a child
on the radio game show Quiz Kids, and after graduating from UCLA’s film school
he served in the Army in the Korean War. After he got out he became one of CBS’
youngest executives. Eventually moving to ABC, he shifted into programming,
becoming VP Daytime Programming and eventually VP Programming under Leonard
Goldberg.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.